The 'Criminal Sentencing' of Purdue Was a Cruel Fiction
This week's performative farce was the antithesis of justice. Even the factual numbers cited were lies or distortions.
Note to readers: The latest in an ongoing series about the Opioid Crisis.
We are told that Purdue Pharma, which long ago pled guilty to its crimes, this week finally had to “stand before a judge” and be criminally sentenced. The judge, who “at times appeared to be on the verge of tears” according to The Associated Press, said she found the company guilty of “a purposeful, intentional and sophisticated crime scheme.” Headlines and government press releases immediately trumpeted the impressive-sounding $5.5 billion penalty she signed off on. Families whose loved ones had become addicted to (and in some cases died from) doctor-prescribed opioids spoke for more than five hours about their suffering. The judge ordered the Chairman of Purdue Pharma to apologize directly to those families for the “intentional and sophisticated crime scheme” that had created all of that addiction. He apologized obediently. With a sigh of contentment, the Justice Department announced Purdue had at last been held “accountable.” Everyone agreed the company would now be ceremonially destroyed, and never allowed to do business again.
And almost none of it was true.
Oh, the criminal conspiracy that intentionally got millions addicted, and raked in billions of dollars — that part was real. So was the suffering ordinary Americans testified to for many hours, and in fact I hesitate to criticize a process that might have unburdened a few people, might have given them relief to feel they’d been heard.
But the hard truth is that they weren’t heard. Sure, a lone judge listened to them, and might have cried a little bit, and promised to keep photos of their dead loved ones in her office for as long as she was a judge. But otherwise, no one relevant “stood before a judge” or apologized. No one paid any kind of a real penalty. The $5.5 billion in criminal fines is a wild, ongoing and shameless fabrication. The judge herself publicly lamented the ways in which justice had fallen short. And Purdue is not even really being “destroyed”.
In fact, neither the company Purdue nor the Sackler family that created the company will even stop selling OxyContin®.
Here’s a quick rundown of the rampant dishonesty of this moment.
“Purdue” did not stand before a judge for sentencing.
“Purdue Pharma” was the corporate address of a criminal conspiracy to trick doctors into a massive increase in opioid prescribing. That conspiracy itself was directed by a handful of human beings: Purdue executives and high-priced consultants, and also leading members of the fabulously wealthy Sackler family. Eventually, the 20-year run of doctor-prescribed opioid addiction they created had become so outrageous and painful that the company was on verge of being destroyed by lawsuits, and the human beings controlling the company possibly even jailed. At that point, those guilty humans — the Sacklers and their lieutenants — sucked billions of dollars out of the company and hid it abroad, declared the company bankrupt, and then started negotiating.
The current Purdue Pharma chairman, Steve Miller, was brought in for the closing act. He’s a former automobile manufacturing executive who’s made a name for himself stepping in to crisis-manage dying companies. He was hired to shepherd Purdue through its multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy.
So, he is just a person (one of many) paid fabulously by the Sacklers to clean up their mess.
Miller was paid to stand there yesterday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey and let the families victimized by the Sacklers heap abuse on him, and to let the judge tell him how bad Purdue sucks, and to apologize-on-demand like a good dog. He did all of that.
But not one of the human beings involved in the conspiracy — no one guilty of the relevant crimes — crimes that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people — was there. “Purdue Chairman Miller” had nothing to do with the crimes he apologized for. He was the equivalent of an actor in a play, put on to create the impression that someone is apologizing.
Even the judge knows everyone is getting away with murder
Family members addressing the court yesterday asked the judge to reject this plea deal, which was hammered out between Purdue and the U.S. Justice Department back in 2020, in the final days of the first Trump Administration. They said they wanted to see the human beings who orchestrated the conspiracy — a criminal conspiracy that, remember, killed hundreds of thousands of people — go to prison.
U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo could have told the family members that they were asking for something inappropriate. She did not.
“The inadequacy of what the law can offer today must be plainly stated,” she said, and also: “It is not lost on me that those who started the epidemic will not serve a sentence.”
As reported by CNBC:
“Arleo said she could not jail Purdue executives or company owners because the U.S. Department of Justice had not brought charges against them, only the company.
“The judge said accepting the plea deal was the best outcome she could achieve, and that she hoped future cases would be handled differently, so that corporate wrongdoers do not get the message that they can ‘pay fines as the cost of doing business’.”
The Sacklers Long Ago Paid Small Fines to Escape Justice
More than five years ago, several Sackler family members paid a pathetic $225 million to the U.S. Justice Department as the cost of doing business. This was a personal fine they paid on their own behalf. It was pocket change, perhaps 1% of the billions they had earned pushing opioids across America. But it was enough to get the Justice Department to go away.
The Justice Department apparently didn’t interview a single Sackler before reaching this decision.
“The authorities were so deferential toward the Sacklers that nobody had even bothered to question them,” wrote author Patrick Keefe in his indispensable book on that era, Empire of Pain. “A decision had been made at high levels of the Trump administration that this matter would be resolved quickly and with a soft touch. Some of the career attorneys at Justice were deeply unhappy with this move, so much so that they wrote confidential memos registering their objections, to preserve a record of what they believed to be a miscarriage of justice.”
That frustration could be heard back then between the lines of a defiant Justice Department press release: It stated that “years of hard work by the FBI” had found Purdue executives & the Sacklers guilty of “illegal and inexcusable activity.” And it added that, while the Justice Department was accepting a small donation of $225 million to look the other way, it reserved the right to reverse itself at any point and to bring criminal charges, including specifically against the Sacklers:
If “years of hard work by the FBI” had found “illegal and inexcusable activity” — why excuse it?
The Justice Department back then claimed Purdue Pharma itself would also be fined more than $8 billion (in both criminal and civil Federal penalties), under a deal in which the company would plead guilty to criminal behavior in encouraging an epidemic of addiction for money. Again, not a single individual from Purdue’s C suite was named.
This week, the empty shell of “Purdue Pharma” was finally sentenced under that long-ago brokered plea deal, and “Purdue Chairman Steve Miller” stood there and “apologized”, and the U.S. Justice Department then crowed in a new press release about their successful work to “hold Purdue accountable”. Quote after self-congratulatory quote attributed to top justice officials — from the attorney general to the heads of FBI and DEA — decried how “Purdue Pharma,” motivated by “greed,” had engaged in “reckless and unlawful conduct” that created a “plague that has ruined lives and destroyed families,” “a public health catastrophe,” “widespread devastation,” etc.
But the human beings who visited all of that horror on America weren’t there at the sentencing. They were off enjoying their lives and their wealth.
The Sacklers are Still Selling OxyContin®
Their family empire includes U.K.-based Mundipharma, which earns far more than $1 billion a year selling OxyContin® in China and other parts foreign.
Who knows, maybe someday Mundipharma will open a U.S. office, and start selling opioids to the American market. After all, Mundipharma isn’t guilty of anything — that was Purdue Pharma.
If Mundipharma did ever open a U.S. affiliate, I wonder what they’d call it.
Purdundipharma? Murdue?
The $5.5B Fine, Like the Earlier $8B Fine, is a Fiction
The Justice Department press release claimed Purdue Pharma had just been “ordered to pay criminal penalties of over $5 billion for its role in fueling the opioid epidemic.” Media also trumpeted this $5.5 billion penalty.
In reality, as previously reviewed, only about $275 million of that massive penalty is being collected by the U.S. government.
The remaining $5 billion-and-change?
It is getting vaguely folded into the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy. So, to recap:
The Sacklers (according to the U.S. Supreme Court) siphoned $11 billion out of Purdue in just its final years and then left its carcass behind in bankruptcy; and now, through a years-long bankruptcy process, have agreed to return about $6.5 billion. (Over 15 years, mind you).
The Justice Department has over the years stated it was fining Purdue not only the $5.5 billion criminal penalties handed down in yesterday’s sentence, but also $2.8 billion in civil penalties (over false medical billing to Medicare, Medicaid and other government health insurers), for a total of more than $8 billion. But once Justice had enjoyed the sugar high of headlines about multi-billion-dollar penalties, it dropped those claims and said, “Oh, Purdue is paying enough already through the bankruptcy process.”
In other words, Justice could have made up any number for its press releases and soaked up our applause. But it’s only collecting about $275 million from Purdue and, of course, the $225 million-to-leave-us-alone money from the Sacklers.
Lawyers Have Billed More than $1B So Far
A billion dollars for lawyers — paid up front! — has been billed, so far, on Purdue’s $7.4 billion bankruptcy settlement.
The lawyers have already collected more from the Purdue bankruptcy than all of the 140,000-odd individual victims who have filed claims ever will.
Consider that the entire payout to a given individual harmed by Purdue opioids is expected to run between $8,000 and $16,000 — before legal fees those individuals might accrue, since they each have to pay their own lawyers. Meanwhile, other lawyers have been billing the bankruptcy process $3,000 an hour. A single lawyer has been able to wrest from Purdue’s carcass more in a single day than the amount granted to any individual as total compensation for a life and family destroyed.
Purdue is not going away, it’s getting a makeover
On May 1, Purdue will “transfer its assets” to a new company, Knoa Pharma LLC.
There will be new ownership, and a court-mandated mission of public service. It sounds great, doesn’t it?
Here are some final fun facts:
Knoa Pharma, like Purdue now, will continue to sell OxyContin® and other opioids, at least for a time, probably out of the same office spaces. Why is it doing that? Because it has to provide value to the creditors of the bankruptcy process.
Knoa’s main mission will be to manufacture and sell medications seen as treatments for opioid addiction. Which means that, when the state governments across America go to spend the billions of dollars allocated to them by the Purdue bankruptcy and other opioid legal settlements, they will likely be giving that money to
PurdueKnoa Pharma.Knoa Pharma (and other pharmaceutical companies) will likely spend money clawed back from Purdue and the Sacklers on the project of educating all of us about how the only responsible treatment for opioid addiction is to be started on life-long opioid maintenance therapy. So, we will all have to stomach watching Big Pharma continue to monetize addiction into a tidy and reliable business line, and to do so with sanctimony.
Institutional capture is rampant inside the belt way. All three branches of our federal government have been compromised and is exactly the opposite of the vision of our constitutional framers.
In the executive branch regardless of who is President, there are executives managed by special interests that manipulate and direct the decision making of the President. Our congressman in the legislative branch over all have been captured by special interests. So blatant with IAPAC and Big Pharma, DOJ injustices have been rampant over the last 10 years and the actions of the high priced lawyers for the Sackler's is a prime example. Convincing the DOJ that the drug distributors and drug chains are just as guilty has created NEW CASE law that is a gift to the medical crooks. So, they pay 5.5 billion over 15 years and have had more than 7 years to manage their billions and hide the dollars from confiscation thanks to $2,000 hour lawyers. In the meantime over 85% of the fines exceeding 30 billions dollars are being paid out not by them, but the drug distributors and drug chains. The reverse should have been true and the Sackler's should be penniless. How have they accomplished this feat. Easy. Pretend you are benevolent and smoke our federal gate keepers.
The Sackler Gallery and the Mechanics of "Philanthropy"
It is vital to distinguish between the superficial narrative presented by institutional archives and the reality of how dynastic wealth often operates in the American capital.
You are referring to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which opened in Washington, D.C., in 1987 as a component of the Smithsonian Institution. While often framed in the language of civic generosity, these arrangements frequently serve as sophisticated vehicles for legacy management, tax optimization, and the solidification of social standing among the elite.
💰 The Cost of the "Gift"
There is no single "price tag" for the gallery, as it was not a simple commercial transaction. Instead, the "cost" was a complex calculation involving:
The Initial Endowment: Arthur M. Sackler provided a capital contribution of $4 million in the early 1980s to help fund the construction of the underground facility on the National Mall.
The Collection Valuation: The true magnitude of the gift lay in the 1,000 objects of Asian art Sackler donated from his private collection. The appraised value of such a collection—ranging from ancient Chinese bronzes to South Asian sculpture—was, and remains, substantial, likely reaching tens of millions of dollars in total market value at the time.
Ongoing Maintenance:
While the institution is part of the Smithsonian, the "cost" to the taxpayer for maintaining such facilities is perpetual, effectively creating a permanent public subsidy for the preservation of a private donor's legacy.
🎯 The Motivation: Why Do They Do It?
To understand the motivation, one must look past the veneer of "fostering cultural understanding." In the rarefied air of the American donor class, these institutions function as:
Legacy Laundering:
By affixing a family name to a prestigious, permanent institution on the National Mall, donors ensure that their name is detached from their business practices—in the Sackler case, the source of their immense wealth—and permanently associated with "high culture," art, and intellectual contribution.
Regulatory and Social Insulation:
Significant donations to public institutions grant the donor access to the highest echelons of government and cultural gatekeepers. This creates a protective buffer of social capital, making it difficult for the public or regulators to critically scrutinize the family’s other business ventures.
The "Revolving Door" of Prestige: Philanthropy of this scale is rarely an act of altruism; it is an investment in institutional power. By embedding their family name into the bedrock of the Smithsonian, they ensure that even as the cultural winds shift, the family brand remains a fixture of the national narrative, shielded by the prestige of the institution that houses it.
It is a classic maneuver: convert liquid capital—often gained through industries that thrive on exploitation or opaque practices—into unimpeachable social capital. The "library" and the gallery are not merely repositories of books and artifacts; they are monuments to the influence of those who can afford to purchase their place in history.
WHERE IS THE TRUE JUSTICE FOR THE FAMALIES OF 660,000 AMERICANS THAT LOST THEIR LIVES BECAUSE OF THE GREED INHERENT IN THE SACKLER DNA?
Here we see the limits of corporate personhood, a pernicious idea that should never have been hatched.